Vampires (sometimes stylized as Vampire$) is a 1990 horror novel by John Steakley. A dark fantasy with a contemporary setting, the novel concerns a company called Vampire$, Inc. which treats vampire-hunting as a commercial enterprise, funded by large payments from the vampires' potential victims and secretly supported from the highest levels of the Roman Catholic Church.
Contents
Plot summary
Vampire$, Inc. cleans out a nest of vampires, but has some difficulty collecting their payment and ultimately hosts a wild party at a local motel with all of the team and some townsfolk. The party is interrupted by a "master vampire" who slaughters everyone at the party with the exception of Jack Crow and his second-in-command "Cherry Cat" Catlin.
The shaken Jack begins to plan the formation of a new team, aided by Father Adam, a knowledgeable young priest sent to him by the Vatican. Events at the motel slaughter lead Jack to realize that silver, particularly blessed silver from a cross, can be used as a weapon against vampires. He has his weaponsmith Carl begin creating silver bullets and he recruits a skilled gunman named Felix, that Jack met while working as a government agent in Mexico. Felix proves to be as deadly with a pistol as Jack hoped and they seem to have a new and powerful resource to use against the vampires. In addition to the silver bullets, Carl also develops a "vampire detector" for use by the team, which proves to be a useful tool against the vampires (which are portrayed as fantastically fast and powerful compared to humans, particularly the 'master vampires').